The Death of Meaning in Alice in Borderland

Alice in Borderland (2020-2025) is a Netflix live-action adaptation of Haro Aso’s manga of the same title. The drama revolves around Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), an unemployed gamer who finds himself in a parallel-universe Tokyo, where he and his companions are forced to compete in dangerous games to survive. Many fans compare the show to Squid Game (2021-2025), as they share the utilization of death games to expose the facets of humanity and morality. However, Alice in Borderland focuses on existentialist themes rather than social critique and realism like its contemporaries. 

Seasons One and Two of the drama follow the manga’s original storyline, where a strange event wipes out everyone in Tokyo. Arisu and his friends wake up in an empty, alternate version of the city where they can survive by completing a series of deadly games. Each game corresponds to a card from a standard deck: the suit determines the type of challenge—spades for physical strength, diamonds for logic, hearts for emotional manipulation, and clubs for teamwork—and the number denotes the difficulty, escalating from ace to king. At the end of Season Two, Arisu successfully finishes all of the games and is finally able to return to the real world. Later, it is revealed that a massive meteorite hit Tokyo, and Arisu was actually transported to the Borderland, a parallel universe between life and death that determines whether or not they survive in the real world. The third season of the show was released in September, set to be a definitive ending to the story. The new season’s plot follows Arisu as he returns to the Borderland four years after the meteorite to save his wife, Yuzuha Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), whom he had cleared the games with in prior seasons. Ultimately, Season Three of Alice in Borderland feels sloppy, riddled with plot holes, flat character arcs, and uneven pacing. It fails to capture the existential weight that defined the earlier seasons, replacing its tension and moral complexity with a hollow continuation driven solely by commercial demand.

The first episode alone presented several plot holes; Arisu and Usagi being married is inconsistent with the events of the second season, as both of them had lost their memories in the final episode, with no way to reconnect. One day, Usagi suddenly disappears, and Arisu realizes that she was invited back to the Borderland. He follows her, and the episode ends with the opening of a new game. However, these new games are not connected to the original deck of cards at all, obscuring the main point of the games. Additionally, the plot of the first episode feels dragged out in the beginning with slow cinematography, yet Arisu and Usagi’s interactions are confusingly rushed. The pacing of the first episode feels like it was elongated just to build up some suspense for the ending cutscene of the first game venue.

From then on, Arisu and his new friends from the first game go off to complete several other games. While Arisu’s main goal is to find Usagi, each game feels so long that his motive is only emphasized once in a while to remind the viewer. On the other hand, Usagi does not show much regret about leaving Arisu behind. She completes the games with Ryuji Matsuyama (Kento Kaku), a researcher obsessed with the afterlife, and the one who made her join him in the Borderland. Arisu and Usagi’s relationship does not feel strong at all and is generally forgettable throughout the season. The new characters that Arisu travels with are also executed poorly; their relationships are barely developed, and their backstories are left vague. The group is made up of nine people total, but the drama rarely shows any actual interactions they share outside of the games. As a result, their deaths lack emotional weight and do not contribute much to the actual stories. The characters are depicted to be upset, but the viewers haven’t connected and empathized with them. 

The season ends with the introduction of the Joker game, which is supposed to complete the deck of cards that Arisu completed in the last two seasons. However, by then, the season has already lost much of its impact. The climax of the game is dragged out, and it never even reaches any actual end; when Arisu reaches the final stage of the game, the city starts falling apart, and everyone ends up exiting the game. Arisu meets an unnamed man who forces him to choose between death and returning to the real world, even if it means more trials and pain. The unnamed man’s identity is never specified, but it’s implied that he is in charge of the Borderland. Eventually, Arisu decides to go back to the real world, and he and Usagi exit the Borderland safely along with the remaining survivors. The final scene of the season takes place in the United States, hinting that the Borderland is heading overseas. By turning the ending into a teaser for a potential spin-off rather than a philosophical resolution, the show abandons the ambiguity that made the Borderland meaningful in the first place. Instead of giving the story a proper ending, it sets up more content for other projects, essentially diluting the original existential mystery that made the first two seasons interesting.

Many fans were left confused and unsatisfied with the execution of the final season, labeling it a cash grab by Netflix to capitalize on the show’s popularity. The season feels less like a continuation and more like an exploitation of its own success, and the transformation from existential thriller to generic action drama cheapens the original message that Aso intended to send to his audience. While it has its moments, Alice in Borderland Season Three was a major disappointment, dragged down by a watered-down plot while lacking in emotional appeal, suspense, and character development.